On June 12^th this year I have been invited to do my first keynote at the OCEACT Conference in Bend Oregon. This is a conference for providers who work on ACT teams throughout the state of Oregon. I feel it is a good fit because early in my career I used to work on a case management team as such.

I have created a speech that addresses my concern about California’s recent passing of Proposition 1 that targets people with my diagnostic history as a means of addressing the homelessness issue that is rampant throughout the state.

I will be examining the impact of my exposure to a violent section 8 housing authority project in Seattle WA called the Morrison Hotel and my three-month psychiatric incarceration at Montana State Hospital to examine the impact of involuntary treatment. I will be highlighting how difficult it is to come back from such catastrophic loss and how mandating two years of treatment bears the potential of making social rehabilitation more challenging.

I have felt neglected in terms of gaining an opportunity to do a keynote. I have fears of public speaking that I have worked to overcome by doing workshops. I repeatedly failed to get support from local leaders and eventually stopped going to CASRA Conferences because even though my ratings came back very positive, I was never given the opportunity to do a keynote.

I recently got diagnosed with two bulging discs in my neck and severe stenosis down my right arm adding to the challenge that lays before me. This morning, I got an injection in my neck that I hope will offer me some relief and improve my ability to present.

After my Keynote, I will lead a breakout session. I will present an abbreviated hour and a half version of my Journey Through Madness Training to demonstrate how culturally specific training can vastly help case managers improve their connections with people like me. I hope to gain participants for my 2025 training and maybe sell a few books. For more information about the conference click: https://oceact.org/

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In the month of October, there have been some exciting developments in the local efforts to make hearing voices groups available to the public. HVN-USA is coming out to San Francisco to provide a three-day training for twenty-five individuals, including several people who have been attending groups in East Oakland where I provide a free group to the public.

I am hoping to create a second training for the licensed professional who we would have to have pay to obtain CEU Credits. This would be hosted by PEERS and train an additional ten peers who could then mix with professional and offer groups at local agencies. This would help us recreate the services we provided in the special messages project throughout the county. The vision of having groups with a professional and a person with lived experience within the system to transition people into HVN Groups is alive and well.

In October, I provided a two-hour training at La Chiem Outpatient Program in Oakland and got an invite back in December to complete the training. This spurred me to spend a weekend or two improving my presentation so that I could present it for a six-hour CEU class for providers. I am now hoping to not only take the HVN training but to learn how my training which reconstructs a new definition of psychosis may compliment it.

Getting more people trained and working on outreach at PEERS may give me a chance to use my work to provide ongoing training to help peers in their outreach efforts.

In the meantime, I have been able to initiate peer services at my job at Highland Hospital and will be hosting two peer interns to see if more people with lived experience can complement and improve our services. I have been working on preparing to host these interns and in the process of hiring them. This also has been a dream of mine

I also have paid to pretty-up my blog and fixed a bug in a plugin and now can officially sell books from my website. Thus, I am going to slash the price of my memoir to twelve dollars in case any of my followers want to purchase new second edition copies.

SALE PRICE: $11.00

In the midst of this I have published two blog posts this month that may be worth checking out:

Demystifying Complex Trauma for Therapists

I Wash My Hands in the Muddy Waters of the Mental Health System

The post Advancing “Psychosis” Treatment Locally appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

Dear Tim,
We had a staggering 1,023 entries in the 2018 TopShelf Indie Book Awards, and your book Fighting for Freedom in America: Memoir of a “Schizophrenia” and Mainstream Cultural Delusions has been selected as a Finalist in the category of Autobiography/Biography!

Warm Regards,

Keith Katsikas
CEO & Publisher
TopShelf Magazine

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It has been another stressful month of intense weekend work and low levels of published output on my blog. I finally invested in a WordPress Business Plan and after two months of unsuccessful haggling on Fiver, I hired a web designer at a reasonable price to construct me a professional website.

Well, investing in a business plan proved to be an act of faith I should have taken many moons ago, but I did not know exactly what I wanted from a web designer and did a poor job of communication and a lot of praying for a good outcome. This I would not advise.

I learned that an author website and platform is a very personal thing. What I received for two hundred dollars did not in any way artistically represent my platform, values and purpose. With intense stress, I had to part with two hundred dollars I could have invested in advertising and learn to use plugins and set up a professional website on my own using models from other platforms to teach me.

For this reason, I want to take a minute and say thank you to some other writers who significantly helped me in this process. These are some effective platforms that helped me realize what I could accomplish from making a better first impression. Many of them are connected to my niche and offer writing that readers or other authors might enjoy:

https://www.yourwriterplatform.com/ with Canadian Kimberly Grabas

https://www.esmewang.com writes about schizophrenia

https://rachaelintheoc.com writes about sexual abuse

https://zackmcdermott.com great marketing for his memoir on madness

I have managed to start a few posts and, those readers who are on my author email list, will get a sneak peak of an article I have written specifically for the new social worker magazine. If you are not on my official email list, what are you waiting for? Click! Here! Now!

The post I provided as a sneak peak last month about demystifying complex trauma and my history of sex abuse has yet to be picked up by any media outlets. And I am going to reach out to some new publishers, but I have also learned to research publishers to some extent and write specifically for them

Finally, as my press release suggests, I have spent the month going back and forth trying to decide what to do about my pseudonym, Clyde Dee. After reading about other memoir writers who have struggled with the same issues, I have decided not to retreat into my shell and publish under Clyde Dee anymore.

My memoir has significantly offended some family members which was what I feared; however, some have been supportive. Most of what I said about people was written from the perspective of me in madness and I think that helps. And although I ultimately tried to be harder on myself than I was on any of them, I understand that my perspective on life is offensive to some and I have decided to accept painful pushback as gracefully as I can with as much compassion for them as I have for myself.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE     

Outskirts Press Releases New Memoir About Surviving a Diagnosis of Schizophrenia:

Fighting for Freedom in America by Clyde Dee

In the frontiers of America’s mental health institutions, fighting for freedom can become very personal.

September 24, 2015 – Denver, CO and Oakland, CA – In Fighting for Freedom in America, released by Outskirts Press, mental health counselor and author Clyde Dee asks, “Have you ever wondered if something is wrong with you? Have you ever wondered what it is like to find yourself driven into madness; and whether you will ever come back from catastrophic loss?”

Six years into a protected clinical career as a mental health counselor, Clyde Dee moves to Seattle and takes a job in a Section 8 housing project—a complex notorious for drug dealing and a site where no one else is willing to go. As Clyde works to empower and protect the people, he finds himself embroiled in the politics of the local drug war, and a fractured social system is revealed. Uncanny threats and coincidences drive him into madness when he decides to go off a low dose of antipsychotic medication.

Clyde is stopped by police when he tries to exit the country and is incarcerated in a psychiatric ward for three months. In the years that follow after he is released to the streets, he moves through American disparities and cultural delusions, facing some of his worst fears and striving to regain what he has lost.

Fighting for Freedom in America pulls back the curtain to let us see what it would be like to lose our rights and be imprisoned in a state hospital. But while Clyde’s story is shocking, it is also a beacon of hope. Despite homelessness, underemployment, and harassment, he discovers that with family support, it is possible to heal and make his dreams come true. He is able to make peace with the forces that are following him around and morph into someone who is grateful for life—and a person who loves the journey.

At 328 pages, Fighting for Freedom in America is available online through Outskirts Press at www.outskirtspress.com/bookstore. The book is sold through Amazon and Barnes and Noble for a maximum trade discount in quantities of 10 or more, and is being aggressively promoted to appropriate markets with a focus on the memoir category.

ISBN: 978-1-4787-5992-8                  Format: 6 x 9 paperback cream                       Retail: $20.95  eBook: $5.00

Genre: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs

For more information, visit the author’s webpage at www.outskirtspress.com/fightingforfreedominamerica.

About the Author: Now with over twenty years of paid experience in the mental health arena, Clyde Dee works in Richmond, California, in an outpatient program. He additionally works to help train individuals who have lived with “psychosis” to reach those still marginalized by stigma, institutionalization, and isolation.

About Outskirts Press, Inc.: Outskirts Press offers full-service, custom self-publishing and book marketing services for authors seeking a cost-effective, fast, and flexible way to publish and distribute their books worldwide while retaining all their rights and full creative control. Available for authors globally at www.outskirtspress.com and located on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado, Outskirts Press, Inc. represents the future of book publishing, today.

# # #

Outskirts Press, Inc., 10940 S. Parker Rd – 515, Parker, Colorado 80134

http://outskirtspress.com 1-888-OP-BOOKS

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Click for Interview

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Through a sea of tissues and a hacking cough, I scan Netflix pressing that stubborn button on my Roku remote multiple times. I read the summations of shows for several minutes until I come across a documentary called, the 13^th. Finally, I settle in. Resting is not an easy thing to do with that constant sense of urgency I live with.

I don’t know what’s worse these days: dragging through a pre-holiday week on the outpatient psychiatric unit on Dayquil; or listening to the radio talk about impending loss as the new cabinet of Trump supporters get selected.

A cross town slog into East Oakland after work on the unit one night last week revealed once again that the streets are ever-burgeoning with homeless, some of whom I know intimately. In each car encampment, I saw a distinctive cultural story that needs to be heard.

Living with “Schizophrenia” is not all that hard of a thing to do when you have a warm bed and a Roku machine. Sure there are memories of your brothers and sisters you left behind in the barracks of State Hospitals. Sure, there are people you work with who are still in such grave poverty. But when you have a happy marriage, gainful employment, and a meaningful pastime, it isn’t really all that difficult. Isn’t difficult, that is, except for the fact that you have to stay silent about a world unobserved by most; except for the guilt you have for having survived atrocity when others still haven’t gotten to the other side yet.

Out walking with my wife, earlier in the day we discussed the value of protest, from the North Dakota Pipeline to Black Lives Matter. It is really uncanny these days how afraid I am to join something that I once felt was part of my democratic rights. It is not so much the teargas or the rubber bullets or the pepper spray in my eyes that hold me back. It is my job, my trauma history, my fear of sending the county that employs me the wrong message.

State surveillance is something that kept able-bodied me remarkably underemployed for several years. For those Americans who think this is not possible in our democracy, I have written a book for you. Perhaps, if I had known that I was wearing an ankle bracelet, it may have helped me accept the fact that I had only one job opportunity in spite of hundreds of resumes and applications. The irony that the job entailed work at an Italian Delicatessen when I believed the mob was following me just didn’t occur to anyone. It wasn’t the fact that with bike commute, I had to work twelve hours a day for nine thousand dollars a year that made it difficult. It was the cutting personal harassment and the fact that everyone thought I was just a schizophrenic and not worth seeing.

And to this day, it is striking what can be accomplished and just get swept under the rug. Since my recovery, my memoir has won awards in three contests. I have written and directed a program that brought specialized group treatment into hospitals, local agencies, and homeless shelters that was very successful. I maintained tenure at my job with my psychotherapy license during this time. All this and the county still does not interface with me as it strives to implement my program. Very few people have endeavored to read my book. I still battle with that same sense of invisibility.

But as the documentary the 13^th proceeds in my weakened state, I see aspects of my experience unfold. I know what I went through and continue to fight doesn’t just happen to mad people who get subjected to the medical model. The realities of mass incarceration, which afflicts every person of color and immigrant person as well gives me new angles on accepting the shit that I went through. The fact is that what I went through seemed so unique, when it hits close to home for the broad majority.

Bigoted laws disproportionately target the majority. I have always known this, especially when I was in my altered state; but the documentary helps validate the effects of incarceration. Additionally seeing the visualizations of the numbers afflicted helps me feel glad that I have been targeted too.

Seeing the young African American man in the documentary get targeted for refusing to accept a guilty plea was something that I particularly related to. For a long time I refused to accept that I am “a schizophrenic” in a similar manner. I took me such a long time to accept that I could have three months taken from me and be reduced to the most ridiculous poverty and subsequent homelessness over nothing that would ever be explained to me. But though that refusal to accept injustice that I relate to so intimately, hurt me personally, it did not result in the death of me. The fact that I survived and the young African American man died, it just speaks to my own ongoing white privilege that exists with my bed and my Roku and my snot rags.

Of all the movies that touched me during the two and a half years I lived in an altered state, none did so as strongly as Chris Rock’s routine in the movie, Down to Earth. Watching Chris Rock fret about being caught with the rich, dead man tickled me to no end. There sat the murderous wife cool as a cucumber without a care in the world. It was exactly what it is like working at an Italian Deli when you think the mob (and the Feds) are following you. I laughed inappropriately for hours. It was about mass incarceration.

But what I find so hopeful watching this documentary, the 13^th, is that against all the lies of power and stigma, the truth can be represented and told. I am grateful that the mainstream who endeavor to give it a chance might come to understand the effects of mass incarceration and how it too could happen to them.

These days perhaps I am not the only person lying sick in my bed waiting for things to get much worse. If there are others there with me, I would highly recommend watching this documentary. It is oh so good to know that ultimately the truth can prevail in our minds. It makes me proud that I broke my book contract because they wanted to edit away my commentary on racial disparity. It makes me proud that the county does not interface with me about my efforts. It makes me proud that I protested in the WTO protest and that I now can support protests which make 13^th possible in a variety of meaningful ways. Simply put, the documentary, the 13th gives me a ray of hope that I am not all alone with “Schizophrenia” and suffering without purpose. It helps me prepare for what is to come for the multitudes in the bay area in the immediate future.

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I think groups help message receivers when it comes to being flexible with the concept of causation of “psychosis.” One of the few rules of a Hearing Voices Network Group is that all causation explanations are allowed. I’d argue that this sets the stage for what I have come to term functional flexible theory styles. Hearing authentic stories from peers about their experience and beliefs of causation  invites collaboration and ultimately flexibility. I think this naturally helps people out towards their social goals

Not only is discussing their experiences without punishment a novel and emancipating idea, it encourages a sense of belonging to a peer group. A positive consequence is that the group becomes more less focused on the content and more the process of what is going on. There is a sense of working together that helps the message receiver be more mindful and open.  For eight years I have watched this process help heal people.

It is true I have developed some jargon to describe the process of message receiving. In the process of doing this I have become a believe that causation flexibility can help facilitate social goals.  For starters, in my upcoming book on Special Messages, I identify five causation styles:

5 Styles of Theory

psychologies

• Messages are your inner thoughts or unconscious beliefs. They are just in your head.  We broadcast our unconscious beliefs in ways that cause others to interact with us in ways that make our unconscious beliefs realities.

• Messages are a way of processing things that we aren’t willing to deal with.

• Messages are a return to a regressed period of attachment in which the baby has destructive relationships with the boobs.

oppression of the state

• Messages come from people following you around and tormenting you in order to control or seek revenge on you who could be a gang, government, corporations, masons, aliens, or other secret societies.

• Messages are real evidence that the government has to socially control snitches and put them in ditches.

trauma

• Messages are nothing but figments of past perpetrators or abusers.

• Messages come from the social thoughts or judgments of others, the social mainstream, or the collective unconscious of others (Stigmas) that are being used to decrease your social standing

spiritual

• Messages come from god, fairies, aliens, ghosts or what we in the west call supernatural experiences.

• Messages are processes that may help or hurt you in evolving or adapting to the dilemmas of a modern environment.

• Messages are there to test your ability to be good and evil and are there to lead you to lead others.

scientific processes

• Message are caused by genetic differences or scientific processes that develop because of nuero-diversity that isn’t socially selected to survive.

• Message happen when neuro-transmitters get changed through things like environmental stress patterns that fall into genetically derived conditions

• Messages happen when spiritual genes get persecuted in our society

Though groups work quite naturally, I have developed some techniques to help explain or demonstrate the importance of being flexible with causation.  When I jargon-talk functional flexible theory styles with people, I explain that every special message (voice, intuition, interpersonal perception, symbolic interpretation, punny linguistic coincidence, cue from the media or natural occurrences, etcetera) that causes distress can be dealt with by varying the theory style and make alternative meaning of the experience. Usually message receiver us only one theory style during crisis and it make the experience unbearable/

When the message receiver can  learn to become open to accepting alternative theories, it can catapult them in terms of their ability to complete social functioning tasks. Eventually, they simply need to choose to believe an explanation that they can accept that decreases distress. An alternative theory doesn’t even have to claim to be real or true, but if the message receiver can use it to decrease distress, they might learn a positive skill. Then, they need to wait and let god reveal the answer to them. It is about using spirituality to enhance emotional intelligence. Hence I like to call this a spiritual skill.

What does this look like?

Below I have identified five different kinds of message experiences and and created different causation explanations based on the above theory styles. To be helpful to a message receiver in distress from a special message, I propose using  the graph below to create alternative meanings of the special message experience.  These can be proposed to a message receiver not as a reality check but as a means to evade extreme distress when they are open to talking about it.

Punny verbal coincidence:

• Speakers unconscious projecting
• Intentional coded disrespect
• Spiritual linguistic coincidence
• Currently insignificant but reminds victim of a past of abuse
• Neuro-chemicals enhancing reality

Object in the road:

• Visual illusion created by the unconscious
• Intentional mafia expression of control
• God or the devil put it there
• Still impacted by the last piece of random litter and in trauma
• Gene code that forces the brain to make insignificant meaning

Voice:

• Unconscious thoughts
• Governmental/mafia communication via vibrations in your fillings
• Alien Satellite communication through a computer chip in your head
• Telepathic directives from evil societies such as the Church of Satan
• Dead relative
• Past perpetrator
• Result of a specific inherited gene that gets activated

Special broadcast on TV movie

• Unconscious illusions based on: what’s really on the message receiver mind
• Hollywood illuminate coding its secret reality
• A special broadcast from the CIA
• Propaganda overseen by the US Government
• Spiritual coincidence that relates to your life
• Witnessing a coincidence that is tipping of a traumatic recall
• Flood of dopamine between the neurotransmitters

Uncanny intuition from an interpersonal interaction:

• Message receivers personal issues being projected onto the situation
• Maybe message receiver is witnessing a real FBI sting, or undercover agent
• An ability to pick up on real spiritual energy
• Able to sense a real perpetrator/victim interaction
• Coincidental flood of serotonin

I believe that having a cultural feel for what is going on during a psychotic episode or message crisis enables a helper to propose alternative meaning that may help the message receiver decrease the distress. Different explanation will work in different contexts.  It is up to the helper to know the message receiver well enough to propose a successful alternative meaning that is acceptable to them.  This can help further the relationship and increase trust for something other than the information and power that the messages wield.

But don’t expect to run off and propose alternative meanings immediately. Using this functional flexible theory style strategy takes some time and relationship to make work. It’s more like the facilitator can highlight this process when it occurs naturally after many sessions and during points of good group cohesion.

   Two Inflexible Dudes!

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For Immediate Release:  September 24, 2016

Reader’s Favorite recognizes “Fighting for Freedom in America” in its 2016 international book award contest.

The 2016 Readers’ Favorite International Book Award Contest featured thousands of contestants from over a dozen countries.

Oakland, California. Readers’ Favorite has become the fastest growing book review and award contest site on the Internet. They have earned the respect of renowned publishers like Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Harper Collins, and have received the “Best Websites for Authors” and “Honoring Excellence” awards from the Association of Independent Authors. They are also fully accredited by the BBB (A+ rating), which is a rarity among Book Review and Book Award Contest companies.

In addition to reviewing for some of the biggest names in the literary industry, as well as the first time independent author, they host a respected award contest which features entries from new authors to NYT best-sellers, as well as celebrities like Jim Carrey and Henry Winkler.

“Readers’ Favorite is proud to announce that “Fighting for Freedom in America” by Clyde Dee is an Honorable Mention in the Non-Fiction – Biography category in our 2016 International Book Award Contest.”

This is the story that reveals both the innards of “Schizophrenia” and the way a person can make peace with the forces that are following them around. Learn about some of the harshest realities in American life: inner-city poverty, housing authority politics, gangsterism, off the grid murder, long-term psychiatric incarceration, homelessness, and isolation from family. This is the perspective of one mental health worker who took advocacy too far and landed in a chronic backwards of a repressive state hospital. Clyde Dee is an anonymous psychotherapist who currently works with twelve years of tenure in an inner-city mental health facility. One day he hopes to help revolutionize treatment for “psychosis” across diagnostic divides.

Learn more at https://readersfavorite.com/book-review/fighting-for-freedom-in-america

“Fighting for Freedom in America was shortlisted for the Book Viral 2015 Book Award, ranking 8^th out of over a thousand contestants: http://bookviral.com/shortlisted-for-2015-bookviral/4591767508. “I finally understand what a person with a mental illness feels like, lives like, and how he fights for his sanity and his life every single day.” Reviewed by Rabia Tanveer for Readers’ Favorite.

Clyde Dee

Fighting for Freedom in America

https://readersfavorite.com/book-review/fighting-for-freedom-in-america

510-735-1358

clydedee.fighting@gmail.com

https://readersfavorite.com/2016-award-contest-winners.htm#cat64

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